Thinking about writing philosophical fiction?

Ideas to get you started, plus common pitfalls to avoid.

As many of you know, I volunteer for a publication called After Dinner Conversation which specializes in publishing philosophical short stories. I was a slush pile reader before I began managing their Substack, and you’d think after evaluating numerous submissions I would have a clear definition of what constitutes philosophical fiction, but alas. Still, I think it’s safe to say most of what we call ‘philosophical fiction’ illustrates an ethical or philosophical issue in an integrated way.

Bringing philosophical ideas to life

If you’re setting out to write a philosophical story, then it makes sense that you would begin with the question itself. I’ll assume you have an idea in mind. Now, what to do with it?

Here are a few ways to conceptualize or frame your idea.

Dilemmas

• Situate two opposing viewpoints or ideologies in a scenario that pits them against one another and forces each to its limit. Craft these diametrically-opposed views so they’re equally compelling.

• Craft a scenario in which there are two equally repugnant options.

Example: “Words of the Ancients” by T. Lucas Earle

Intuition pumps and thought experiments

Mary’s room. Chinese room. Ship of Theseus. Parfit’s teletransportation and split brain. Come up with your own or take one you like and shake things up. That’s what I did for my short story, A Not Very Philosophical Zombie, based on, well, philosophical zombies. The idea came to me one night while I was trying to come up with the kind of evidence that, if discovered, would be a slam dunk against physicalism—a seemingly normal guy with a missing brain! I decided it would be way more fun to write the story from the point of view of a physicalist, in opposition to my own position.

You think you know someone…

• Depict a character with whom most would side or sympathize and reveal why that character’s outlook or actions might not be so great after all.

• Or depict a character whom most would find repulsive and reveal why that character’s outlook or actions might not be so bad after all.

Examples: “Blackorwhite” by Jay Allison. “Metaphors” by Marie Anderson.

Take a common saying LITERALLY

Imagine the absurd possibilities! Don’t get all bent out of shape. A penny for your thoughts. A picture is worth 1000 words. Here’s more. And more.

Examples: “Reginald’s Party” by Clare Diston depicts a world in which you can literally bottle your emotions. “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” by Debbie Zubrick Romani depicts everything in its place except you know what.

P.S. Please don’t do “it’s raining cats and dogs”. This is the only kind of story I can think of for which I would need a trigger warning.

Wish fulfillment

Think about something you would like to change and imagine what life would be like if you got your wish…and what it would cost.

Example: “The Freedom Machine” by Remi Martin.

Look around

The vast majority of submissions to ADC are sci-fi and fantasy, not realism. But I don’t see why that has to be the case, especially considering all the ethical conundrums we deal with in everyday life. Just open a newspaper. Turn on the local news. Why do we need alternate universes and time travel when a world rife with strangeness and moral ambiguity begins immediately to your left?

Common pitfalls…

The kind philosophers tend to tumble into, Thales-like.

When you read a lot of submissions for a single publication, you start to notice certain trends. What is it with you philosophically-minded bunch? ;)

View from the bottom of the well you fell into because you were too busy stargazing.

Opening with dialogue

I’m not saying no one can get away with it, but 9.99999 times out of ten it’s a bad move.

If you’re opening with dialogue because you think it makes for a good hook, let’s see if this grabs you:

“Look out, door’s open,” she warned.

"What did I say? I told you to close it,” he hissed.*

“Whatever. I did close it.”

“If he escapes it’s your fault.”

Are you hooked?

I’m not, and if the dialogue goes on much longer, I’ll stop reading. That’s because I don’t know who’s talking or where they are or what they want or what time of day it is or what time period we’re in or what they look like or what they’re really thinking about. I don’t even know why they’re worried about the door, nor do I care. I might as well be walking into the middle of a conversation blindfolded.

Dialogue slows down time in your story. Slowing down time makes the reader think—Ah ha, this is important! If you don’t believe me, think about what the slo-mo effect does in movies. That dazzling bullet time effect in The Matrix would not be so dazzling as an opening scene.

FIX: Consider opening with description, behavior, inner thought. Anything else.

*I’ll get back to this.

Talking heads

You might be thinking, Yeah but Plato did it.

Yeah but you’re not Plato. (Anyway, have you read the Cratylus?)

I won’t say this form of writing is inherently boring and self-indulgent. Instead I’ll call it a philosopher’s scaffolding. Not all is lost! This is your—our—very special way of talking to ourselves beginning a first draft.

FIX: Rewrite, but this time give your character(s) a secret or something to hide or a concrete goal. What’s at stake? Describe the immediate surroundings, imbuing objects or the environment itself with the character’s moods and concerns. Look for opportunities to leverage subtext rather than relying exclusively on what’s being spoken; that way when the characters do talk, they’re not just talking.

No interiority

Philosophers are supposed to sit in armchairs in sparse, stove-heated rooms doing what? That’s right—introspecting. Then what’s up with philosophers writing stories that read like film scripts, all action and no inner thought? I get the talking heads thing, but this I don’t get.

FIX: If you struggle to get inside the heads of your characters, re-write in the first person:

“I don’t give two shits about designer shoes or what brand of lipstick everyone’s wearing these days, but that’s all Joy talks about.”

Then, if necessary, switch back to 3rd person limited:

“Carol doesn’t give two shits about designer shoes or what brand of lipstick everyone’s wearing these days, but that’s all Joy talks about.”

Info dumps

You know what these are.

Well, maybe you don’t.

Exposition isn’t the same thing as an info dump. Backstory isn’t the same thing as an info dump. Being boring isn’t the same thing as an info dump.

Info dumps are a mishandling of information.

The information you’re dumping might even be necessary, but you’re just not putting it out there the right way. Maybe your problem is too much exposition, but I wouldn’t call that in itself an info dump. Info dumps can’t always be fixed with “show, don’t tell”; sometimes that advice is the source of the problem. I don’t need to hear a real time account of your character getting into a self-driving car while talking to a non-biological friend via some impossibly cool mind-reading technology about how the car they should by now be too familiar with to notice is powered by some impossible-to-pronounce alien substance thanks to an intergalactic war that broke out decades before the story takes place, not when all you need to do is get your character in a floating office cubicle across town. Why not: “He popped into his floating cubicle to see what his idiot boss wanted”?

How are you handling your information? Maybe you’re stuffing backstory in places it doesn’t belong (like a character’s mouth). Maybe you’re cramming world-building into the beginning. Maybe there’s just too much going on and you need to let readers fill in some blanks.

FIX: Do tell, but break it up. Or just cut. Nine times out of ten, just cut.

If you don’t believe me, make the cuts in a duplicate document and get feedback from someone you trust. Did that person say, “Man, I wish I knew about something that happened long before your story takes place?”

If they do, then go ahead and tell, but tell well. Be detailed. Be specific. But be quick.

Not trusting the reader

There are many many many many many many ways authors fail to trust their readers. Repetition is one of them:

“Look out, door’s open,” she warned.

"What did I say! I told you to close it,” he hissed.

She warned. He hissed. Look at all those flipping fancy dialogue tags!

Don’t get me wrong, fancy tags are fine. I’m not one of those NEVER USE FANCY TAGS types—so long as they add something to what’s being said. These don’t. (Anyway, did he really hiss? C’mon now.)

FIX: Imagine your reader is your favorite author. Your favorite author doesn’t need to be told twice.

Awkward transitions in omniscient POV

I don’t consider this an egregious problem, but I notice it often enough. I get the feeling it comes from the fact that many philosophically-minded people who read fiction read sci-fi, which is often written in omniscient. Or maybe people gravitate toward omniscient because it’s a default storytelling mode. After all, it’s what we all grew up with: “Once upon a time…” Whatever the case, don’t let that dreamy storybook narrator from your childhood lull you into thinking omniscient is easy. Passively listening to a masterful storyteller is very different from being a masterful storyteller.

To be clear, I’m not talking about 3rd person limited, which is much easier and looks like this:

What if she was wrong about Brian? Could he really experience the full spectrum of human emotion, despite his lack of mental hardware? No freaking way.

I’m talking about a God-like narrator (or even a narrator-character off to the side of the story) who can enter a character’s mind (above) and pull back to describe things that character doesn’t know (and much more):

She was so horrified by the discovery that her husband was missing a brain that she didn’t see the truck barreling into the intersection.

FIX: You might have heard the term, head hopping. I think the head hopping problem is just one of many bad transitions in omniscient, all of which come from a failure to control narrative distance. Transition problems can happen even when there’s only one character in the entire story; for instance, when there’s a sudden leap from what you might call a wide-angle establishing shot to an extreme close-up (to go back to the filmmaking analogy). To be clear, this kind of thing happens all the time in movies, but in writing it tends to feel jarring and it can even break the magic spell. Of course, sometimes jarring the reader or even pulling back the curtain is exactly what you want to do. But most of the time you don’t want to call attention to your authorial movement into a character’s perspective. Normally you—I mean, your narrator who is the Author of the Story Universe—will want to be in the background easing the reader into your character’s perspective, step by step, and then back out again, step by step. Failure to do so usually stems from the author’s mishandling or unawareness of narrative distance.

For more on narrative distance, check out this article on John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction.

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What do YOU think?

Do you read or write philosophical fiction? Which philosophical stories do you like? What advice would you give to aspiring philosophical fiction writers? Feel free to comment!

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This is technically the end of the post, but the party continues for those of you who like to linger around after everyone else has gone home.

Polls! Who doesn’t love a poll?

I can’t figure out what the difference is between a podcast and a voiceover, except podcasts put this huge ugly audio player at the top and then you can’t add any more audio in the post (see below). Substack Help? Pah! Oh, and then there’s audio embeds, read-alongs…which is different from a voiceover, how? I don’t even want to know what video podcast is.

All these options with audio, but primitive formatting options. You got a picture? It goes right in the middle. No you can’t wrap your text around it, fool.

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MUSIC CREDITS: The music at the beginning of the voiceover, “Mbira Stank Face”, was written by my buddy Mark Nokes.

Here’s a video I made for ADC which maybe 3 people watched, so I’m recycling it here. Wait for it…